Best Chocolate Eclair Recipe

Hey bakers, today we're making a classic French dessert, which just so happens to be my all-time favorite. Chocolate eclairs, light as air choux pastry, filled with vanilla pastry cream and then dipped in chocolate. So easy to make, so satisfying, let's get started. Choux is one of my all-time favorite things to make. It is so, so simple, it's basically foolproof. Half a cup or 113 grams of unsalted butter, one cup of water, 240 milliliters, half a teaspoon of salt, and like a teaspoon and a half, two teaspoons of sugar. We're gonna put this over high heat and bring it to a rolling boil. Take this off of the heat really fast. Dump in one cup or 120 grams of flour and stir hard with a wooden spoon. Stir, stir, stir, stir, stir until it's all incorporated. And we're gonna stir for like 30 to 60 seconds. There we go. Okay, now back onto the heat and stir for another 30 seconds or so. You're gonna see this form like a ball. Now we're gonna dump this out into a stand mixer. You can see it's super hot, so start mixing it on like medium and cracking an egg in at a time. One egg, mix, steam. Once it's incorporated, add the next in. We're gonna wanna scrape the bowl down too. Love the color. Third egg. I want you to see it's becoming kind of like more cohesive, like it's pulling away and forming strands. We want the dough to be hanging on to the paddle attachment, but dripping down slowly. So you want like a nice silky consistency. This isn't here yet, so we're gonna add in one final egg. Not, no. Add in one final egg, like a bit at a time. And let's just see where this is at. Almost there, I'm gonna add the rest of that egg in. That's a total of four eggs. Okay, take a look at this. Clinging, silky, falling away slowly. That's exactly what we want. Now we can transfer this to a piping bag. I have to tell you, the color is just amazing. And would I eat this raw? Yes, I've done that and I think it's delicious. I'm transferring my dough to a piping bag fitted with a large star tip, that's an 869. Normally I would use a round tip, but a star tip should give you a little bit more control when it's baking and have a nice puffy and prettier eclair. But both work and I don't mind the more rustic look of a round tip. If you don't have a piping tip, just snip the tip off your pastry bag and it'll be fine. I have a little dollop of dough here. You stay there. I have a little dollop of dough here and I'm just going to add a smear onto the corners of my baking sheet. It'll hold it in place while I pipe and do my egg wash. I don't want things moving around. I'm gonna try and pipe these out nice and pretty, but if things fall apart, the egg wash fixes everything. So don't freak out, don't worry about it. Make sure to space them out a few inches apart because they do get puffy in the oven. Something very satisfying about piping these out. We're gonna fix those tips at the end, don't worry. You can also use a pair of scissors to cut the end off. That works too and it's not cheating. Setting aside, we have another batch left. These need an egg wash before they go into the oven. It'll make them nice and brown, a little gloss. Tablespoon of milk, one egg, give it a quick mix. Here's a little tip. If things didn't go as wonderfully as you'd like during the piping and they're a little bit misshapen, you can use your egg wash to kind of sculpt things together. It'll fix a lot of the issues. You don't want any little points coming off of these because they're definitely gonna burn. These bake at a high temperature. So just use the egg wash to push down a little bit and then you can gently brush the rest of the way. This one's a little fat, so I'm gonna push it together over here. Think of it as baking Photoshop. The ridges are really gonna disappear for the most part, but they help control the spread during baking. So that's why they're there. That looks good. One more batch to go. These are gonna go into the oven at 425 for 15 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 375 and bake for an additional 20, 25 minutes or so until they're nice and golden brown. And don't be afraid to turn these around halfway through so that they get a nice even color. First off, the custard. It has to chill, so you gotta make it first. You could even make it the day before. You're gonna add in two cups of whole milk and you have an option. I'm gonna go the old fashioned way and use an actual vanilla bean. What are you, dirty old string that's very expensive? No, vanilla beans. If you don't wanna buy these because they are pricey, get vanilla bean paste. It has all the beans in it, a lot of vanilla flavor. Vanilla extract tastes almost exactly the same, so you could also just use the extract. The only thing you're gonna miss are the little seeds. All right, we're gonna split this in half. Just cut down the middle. And now, use your knife and scrape out all those seeds. Throw the pod in as well. We're gonna bring this just to a boil and then take it off the heat. We want nice, hot vanilla milk for this custard. All right, and then while that's happening, while my milk is heating up, let's get to the egg yolks. So I need six egg yolks for this. Gonna separate the whites out. And if you're careful about it, the whites could be used for meringue. Just pop them in the freezer for later. That just came to a boil. It's off the heat now. Let that milk infuse with all that vanilla. One, two, three, four, five, and okay, six egg yolks. Add 2 1⁄3 of a cup of sugar right into that bowl. Whisk until it's light and fluffy. Well, whisk until it's lighter in color. It doesn't have to be super fluffy. This is where my exercise for the day will come. See, that's lighter in color, thickened up. Wonderful. 1 1⁄4 cup of cornstarch. So I'm just going to sift as I whisk to avoid lumps. Nice and incorporated. I have my hot milk mixture. I'm gonna get 1⁄4 cup of it and use it to temper the egg yolks. So basically, we're whisking in a small amount to warm the mixture up so that when we dump the rest in, slowly and carefully, you don't get scrambled eggs. Carefully, I'm going to drizzle this in while I'm whisking vigorously. Vigorously, but carefully. Now I have my hot mixture. What I'm gonna do is just clean this out really quickly and then we're going to strain it back in, set it over heat, and it's gonna be almost done. You're gonna set it over and whisk, whisk, whisk, whisk, whisk continuously. And by the by, I'm using my French whisk, which is a narrower shape than the traditional balloon whisk. So much handier, I feel, for getting the corners of the pan. It just started thickening up. The bubbles are going away. And we're just gonna stir really vigorously and we're done. Okay, so off the heat, I want you to take a look. That is what you're looking for. It smells so good, so thick and lovely, so hot. Needs to go into the fridge, but of course, a custard will form a skin really quickly, just like a pudding, so you wanna cover it with plastic, let it chill for a few hours, overnight, just get it cold. So for the Eclair's chocolate glaze, I'm gonna chop up maybe about five-ish ounces of a really nice dark chocolate. So I'm basically making a ganache. If you have a favorite way of making a ganache, you can let me know in the comments, I'm all ears. I have half a cup of hot cream in here. Let's just add the chocolate in. You can see it's already starting to melt. Just leave it alone for a bit. Let it hang out for a few minutes. And then when you come back, you can whisk it up. It'll be nice and silky, and if it isn't, couple bursts in the microwave will fix everything. All right, let's check this ganache. It's been a few minutes. What? I love this part. It genuinely brings me joy. So pretty, look at this silky ganache. That's perfect. My pastry cream from yesterday that I made is all firmed up, nice and cool, and because I haven't had breakfast yet, there's my favorite thing to eat. That's so good. Okay, so we're gonna make a little bit of whipped cream, and by a little bit, I mean one full cup of heavy whipped cream. In you go. And then we're gonna whip it up with a couple tablespoons of sugar. Whip it up. It's getting thick. I'm gonna add in a splash of vanilla. Very nice, take a look. Perfect, okay. Choose however much you wanna fold in. You could fold in a tiny little bit, a lot, it's up to you. I'm actually gonna whisk this in. It'll make it more pipeable, too. Okay, there we go. Now I have a pastry cream with a little bit of whipped cream folded in. It's gonna be easier to fill my eclairs, and it is gonna be so delicious. I could just eat this entire bowl. Okay, what am I gonna do to fill these? The best way is to use a 230 piping tip. This is basically like a really large injector needle, and it's going to pierce the bottom like that. You're gonna squeeze in that delicious pastry cream that we lightened with the whipped cream, and you're gonna be done. If you don't have one of these tips, what you could do is just cut the eclair in half, fill it with the filling however you want, and then make it into like a sandwich. It's better not to overfill your piping bag because your hands will warm this up and it'll become a little bit runny, so cold is best. This looks so daunting. Take a cool eclair shell, and then just fill it up, and you'll feel it getting heavy. Holds a lot. I was like, isn't it coming out? Fill, fill, fill. And then you can just fill either until you see it coming out the top or it feels like it's heavy enough. Here we go. Ah, this feels nice and substantial now. These hold so much pastry cream. One of the reasons I like lightening these up with whipped cream is because they're just like little balloons, they hold a ton. I would eat this right now in a hot second, but for you, I'm waiting for the chocolate. These should be filled pretty much right before serving for best results because you want the shell to have that kind of nice crispness about it. The pastry cream will make things soggy after a while. Now for the finishing touch, a dip in that silky chocolate ganache. I cannot tell you how excited I am to eat this. That's very nice. Very nice. Doesn't that look like sexy? I don't know. Do you want me? I do. Just like that. Perfect. If chocolate looks a little bit off, a little cream, a little whisking fixes everything. Let's just have a bite. Do you see all this pastry cream on the inside? With the chocolate, this really crisp, paper-thin, ultra-light shell. I'm not gonna subject you to me eating, but if you love this recipe, check out my ultimate German chocolate cake. It is so good. You will put your eclair down, check it out, eat the eclair while you're making the cake. That's the situation there. And you can also check out my cake super cut compilation video. Just the good stuff, all the decorating. Check it out.